Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Shit house poetry

So writing inside port-a-johns and latrines has existed in the Army since the beginning of time, I'm pretty sure. Some stuff starts and carries across the planet (POST IS GAY, GILBERT PUMPS CATS, etc.), other stuff is localized. It happens. Dudes are bored and/or frustrated and writing on a plastic wall with a sharpie is a way for them to vent. It's harmless as far as I'm concerned - I've never seen anything extraordinarily offensive. Sometimes, you get told to take a can of spray paint and go coat the shitter walls - then people write over it, whatever. It's part of deployment life. Of course, if you have a slow OPTEMPO and a unit full of staff officers and NCOs with nothing better to do, then shit gets stupid. Really stupid. Posting guards 24/7 on every shitter on the FOB type stupid.

Until the person comes forward and admits to what they wrote - which no one knows because it was painted over immediately and also the shitter it happened in is not being disclosed, our unit has to guard every shitter on the FOB. A person will stand outside and log every person that goes in then go in after them, inspect the latrine fully for graffiti and log them out. I heard this and I laughed - haha April Fools, right? Nope. I can't help but think: what the fuck are we doing here? Why are we deployed if we just spend our time doing dumb shit like this? I thought group punishment ended after Basic Training but I guess not. You'd think that with over 50% of senior NCOs and officers being sent to separation boards soon in order to reduce the number of people in the Army, leaders would not do stuff like this, but then I guess you'd be thinking wrong.

This reminds me of that one time I was in Iraq where we stood in formation everyday for 30 minutes because someone wrote "Thanks for the breastmilk" on a care package full of suntan lotion that came from someone's well endowed mother. Ironically enough, nothing makes me want to write graffiti on the inside of a shitter more than being forced to spend my free time guarding said shitter against graffiti. Go figure.